A couple of weeks ago, Qualcomm launched their new Snapdragon 888 platform which will be present in premium smartphones next year. The promise is to take the high-end of Android smartphones to levels of performance they’ve never seen before. Ever since Apple broke up with Qualcomnn months ago, the two have started competing with each other and this rivalry between two companies is resulting in some impressive advancements on both sides.
Coming to the main platform itself, the Snapdragron 888 will be able to provide:
Better 5G
The availability of bandwith in many locations have proved to be pretty disappointing. As it involves the connectivity of cell sites which are still being upgraded. The pandemic has clearly slowed the rollout, but looks like by the middle of next year we should finally be seeing the benefits in most areas we have been promised. The Snapdragon 888 will feature Qualcomm’s X60 modem, so between the new 5nm architecture and the power efficiency gains from an integrated modem, the new chip seems likely to offer some substantial battery improvements when it comes to 5G usage.
Photography Improvements:
These cameras have something called “staggered HDR” which can click three pictures simultaneously: one underexposed, one overexposed, and one appropriately done. The camera then merges them to bring out all of the hidden detail in the picture. The new cameras have the ability to take 120 images per second, allowing for incredible slow motion shots and pictures without a flash in as little as .1 Lux, which translates to one-tenth the light of candle one meter away on a one-square-meter surface.
Gaming:
Gaming is definitely another area that will see huge improvement. The popularity of Esports on mobile devices have been taking off, and at the premium-end of the market, smartphones are going to get a substantial increase in performance and battery life. This performance increase is definitely going to favour the one billion people currently gaming on their smartphones. “QuickTouch” is a new feature that removes the touch-screen latency and allow smartphone gamers who use these new phones with the 888 platform to be far more competitive. Qualcomm also uses a technology called VRS to increase performance by 30%, while reducing GPU load by 40% since GPU’s are nortorious for pulling a ton of power. New phones will handle up to 90 frames per second with HDR enabled, and the lowest latency ever on a smartphone platform.
Artificial Intelligence:
Qualcomm’s TOPS (trillions of operations per second) technology currently has over one billion user’s devices enabled with 15 TOPS (performance levels). But by next year, the new AI should jump to 26 TOPS levels. A boost with natural language processing (NLP) will allow you to better interface with your phone’s features via voice, which arises the possiblity to do translations in real time, even if your phone does not intially know the language.
Another unusual aspect of the camera that Qualcomm showed off, is the infared’s ability to anlayse your image and help you pick better make-up or even diagnose an illnes, which can be agrued to be beneficial especially during the pandemic times.
Sensing Hub Feature:
Qualcomm’s sensing hub feature aggregates the phone sensors and then actually uses the data to answer specific questions like, “where the hell did I leave my car?”. A feature that would baically help you retrace your steps if you lost something and needed to recover it. This feature makes a smartphone increasingly aware of its surrounding, it could automatically call for help if you were injured, provide warnings to stay away from dangerous locations, and during a disaster it can guide you to safety which can potentially be life saving.
To conclude, I would like to say that it is inevitable for the next generation of smartphones to be far more smarter, faster and useful to us. Qualcomm is certainly setting an example not only for now, but for many years. I think Qualcomm does really well in providing their chips to smartphones that are affordable to the average consumer, but more importantly, helping smartphones have the possibility to keep us safe and save our lives with such implemented technology. I am really looking forward to what the year of 2021 has in store for us both environmentally and technologically.
Sources:
https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/2/21672519/qualcomm-snapdragon-888-cpu-gpu-details-performance-ai-isp-photography-specs-release-date
https://www.techradar.com/news/qualcomm-snapdragon-888
https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2020/12/02/qualcomm-redefines-premium-flagship-snapdragon-888-5g-mobile-platform